Office and backup files

One of our readers commented on a negative side-effect of our disk cleaning tip we posted last week. It seems that if you use our batch file to clean your hard disk, your Microsoft Office applications may no longer work correctly.

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Quick disk cleanup

Every few months, I like to do a little spring cleaning and remove the hundreds of temporary and backup files which get left behind by various applications.

While there are a number of tools which can tidy up your hard disk using the Windows XP/2000 graphical interface, sometimes a simple batch file is all you need:

del "%systemdrive%\*.bak" /s /q
del "%systemdrive%\*.tmp" /s /q
if exist "%systemdrive%\temp\" del "%systemdrive%\temp\*.*" /s /q
if exist "%systemroot%\temp\" del "%systemroot%\temp\*.*" /s /q 
del "%userprofile%\local settings\temp\*.*" /s /q

Copy and paste the above five lines into your favourite text editor and save the contents to your desktop. Just make sure the file extension is either “.cmd” or “.bat”. Something like “Cleanup.cmd” is probably a good name.

Keep in mind that deleting files this way actually deletes the files permanently instead of putting them in your recycle bin.

Better web security with SiteAdvisor

Everyone who’s used the web has at some point encountered spyware attacks, online scams and spamming sites which earn their profits by taking advantage of user ignorance. While Ad-Aware and Spybot S & D are two must-have tools that no Windows user should be without, there’s an excellent and free browser plugin from McAfee which warns you before you interact with any of the millions of dangerous websites out there.

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Windows Live? Hardly.

It’s been over three months since the launch of Windows Live, Microsoft’s klutzy “Google killer” project. Like Google, Windows Live is offering “personalisation of your homepage”, with news, weather, mail, and (apparently) more.

Apart from the weather service, which recognises that I’m from Melbourne, Australia (not Florida), it’s not really personalisation when none of the available news sources are from Australia, is it? But then again, it’s still in beta, so I guess Microsoft weren’t planning to unleash it on users living in faraway places like Australia just yet.

Why do people hate Microsoft?

I’ve admired the work of Danny Katz for quite a while now. Amongst other things, he writes some wonderfully quirky and humorous columns for “The Age”, here in Melbourne.

In last weeks column, entitled “Standing up for the underdog”, Danny defends Microsoft and asks:

Why do people hate Microsoft so much? They’ve given the world a wonderful word processor that helps us write our documents - even though that annoying office assistant keeps popping up and saying “What would you like me to do?” and you always feel like typing in “Stab yourself in the neck with your own foot”.

Read the rest. The humour is largely in the fact that it’s all true.